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When we moved into the new place near Ada my wife said we could do just a few things to "make it ours". I was thinking painting and new curtains...along those lines. I was thinking wrong.
We started by pulling all the carpet out...of a 4 year old house. Then we bought "Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring" to install throughout. So far, I have a little more than half the house done. Maybe about 70%. It's difficult because we have to remove everything to install the flooring...like all the cabinets, toilets, vanities, etc... And sometimes, because we're doing a seamless transition from room to room, we have to do one room we're really not ready to do in order to do another room. PITA.
Then texturing and painting walls. And we figured out we're really not very good at texturing. Let's just say we're gonna have a lot of stuff hanging on the walls. But that's pretty much done. Still have some painting to do.
Kitchen cabinets. Holy crap! I had no idea how expensive kitchen cabinets were. We went to Home Depot and our first quote was just shy (literally by a few dollars) of $20K. And that's without installation and countertops. Way more than what we can afford. Got another quote for some nice, but lesser quality cabinets from another source and got the price down to about $8500 before installation and countertops. So we were still looking at $13500-ish. Ain't happening.
Then we found Builder's Warehouse in OKC. Decent, unfinished, almost all wood, low end glides, very nice knotty alder doors and drawers. $4024 for the cabinets, cash and carry, install and finish ourselves. OK...that's more like it. Less than $2000 for quartz countertops installed. So now I'm learning how to install cabinets.
Then the wife wanted to put brick throughout the entire dining and kitchen area. Well, we can't afford brick. We can't afford the brick tiles, either. So we found some brick paneling that'll work. But the color was all wrong. So now we're covering it with some texturing and it's actually looking really nice. We'll coat/seal it with some kind of poly-crylic something or other once that's done. It's might actually look really nice.
Anyway, that's how I've been spending my last month or so, between trips to Olustee to get stuff out of the old place. Retirement is a lot of work...
I've got some before and after photos I'll post later once everything comes together a bit more. I'm pretty handy but I just haven't done some things. So it's been a challenge in addition to learning a lot.
I've never been able to hang a door. Not even a pre-hung door. But I did it yesterday in less than 20 minutes. They have these "EZ Hang" door hanging kits out now that make it really easy and it operates perfectly.
Before the door (a listing photo from Zillow):
After Door:
We started by pulling all the carpet out...of a 4 year old house. Then we bought "Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring" to install throughout. So far, I have a little more than half the house done. Maybe about 70%. It's difficult because we have to remove everything to install the flooring...like all the cabinets, toilets, vanities, etc... And sometimes, because we're doing a seamless transition from room to room, we have to do one room we're really not ready to do in order to do another room. PITA.
Then texturing and painting walls. And we figured out we're really not very good at texturing. Let's just say we're gonna have a lot of stuff hanging on the walls. But that's pretty much done. Still have some painting to do.
Kitchen cabinets. Holy crap! I had no idea how expensive kitchen cabinets were. We went to Home Depot and our first quote was just shy (literally by a few dollars) of $20K. And that's without installation and countertops. Way more than what we can afford. Got another quote for some nice, but lesser quality cabinets from another source and got the price down to about $8500 before installation and countertops. So we were still looking at $13500-ish. Ain't happening.
Then we found Builder's Warehouse in OKC. Decent, unfinished, almost all wood, low end glides, very nice knotty alder doors and drawers. $4024 for the cabinets, cash and carry, install and finish ourselves. OK...that's more like it. Less than $2000 for quartz countertops installed. So now I'm learning how to install cabinets.
Then the wife wanted to put brick throughout the entire dining and kitchen area. Well, we can't afford brick. We can't afford the brick tiles, either. So we found some brick paneling that'll work. But the color was all wrong. So now we're covering it with some texturing and it's actually looking really nice. We'll coat/seal it with some kind of poly-crylic something or other once that's done. It's might actually look really nice.
Anyway, that's how I've been spending my last month or so, between trips to Olustee to get stuff out of the old place. Retirement is a lot of work...
I've got some before and after photos I'll post later once everything comes together a bit more. I'm pretty handy but I just haven't done some things. So it's been a challenge in addition to learning a lot.
I've never been able to hang a door. Not even a pre-hung door. But I did it yesterday in less than 20 minutes. They have these "EZ Hang" door hanging kits out now that make it really easy and it operates perfectly.
Before the door (a listing photo from Zillow):
After Door: